Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews June 12, 2023 June 5, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The summer session at Devon is a time of anarchy and freedom, when the teachers are lenient and Finny’s enthusiasm and clever tongue enable him to get away with anything. This session symbolizes innocence and youth and comes to an end with Finny’s actual and symbolic fall, which ushers in the winter session, a time embodied by the hardworking, order-loving Brinker Hadley. The winter session is dark, disciplined, and filled with difficult work; it symbolizes the encroaching burdens of adulthood and wartime, the latter of which intrudes increasingly on the Devon campus. Together, then, the two sessions represent the shift from carefree youth to somber maturity. Finny, unwilling or perhaps unable to face adulthood, dies and thus never enters into this second, disillusioning mode of existence.
Finny’s fall, the climax of the novel, is highly symbolic, as it brings to an end the summer session—the period of carefree innocence—and ushers in the darker winter session, filled with the forebodings of war. So, too, does Finny’s fall demonstrate to Gene that his resentment and envy are not without consequences, as they lead to intense feelings of shame and guilt. The literal fall, then, symbolizes a figurative fall from innocence—like Adam and Eve, who eat from the Tree of Knowledge and are consequently exiled from the Garden of Eden into sin and suffering, the students at Devon, often represented by Gene, are propelled from naïve childhood into a knowledge of good and evil that marks them as adults.
World War II symbolizes many notions related to each other in the novel, from the arrival of adulthood to the triumph of the competitive spirit over innocent play. Most important, it symbolizes conflict and enmity, which the novel—or at least the narrator, Gene—sees as a fundamental aspect of adult human life. All people eventually find a private war and private enemy, the novel suggests, even in peacetime, and they spend their lives defending themselves against this enemy. Only Finny is immune to this spirit of enmity, which is why he denies that the war exists for so long—and why, in the end, Gene tells him that he would be no good as a soldier—because he doesn’t understand the concept of an enemy. It is significant that the war begins to encroach upon the lives of the students with any severity only after Finny’s crippling fall: the spirit of war can hold unchallenged influence over the school only after Finny’s death.
Please wait while we process your payment